On their official Facebook page, Nintendo of America revealed the fate of the potential North American releases of popular Japanese titles, Xenoblade, The Last Story and Pandora’s Tower. In a nutshell: It ain’t happening.
“We never say ‘never,’” read the statement, “but we can confirm that there are no plans to bring these three games to the Americas at this time.”
For fans who were hoping to play these games, an announcement of “no plans” is not necessarily an outright denial. Some other products that had “no plans” for release included the black Wii, the Classic Controller Pro and the Wii Sports Resort bundle.
On the upside, Nintendo is thankful that everyone is such a great fan! That’s something, right?
[source] Nintendo
As far as I know these are being released in Europe so there shouldn't be much localization work to bring it to America. If Nintendo really is trying to attract more core gamers with the WiiU, then it would help to get the ball rolling with titles like these to the Wii. From what I've read Xenoblade is an excellent game so I would love for it to make it over hear so I could have the chance to play it.
Well only Xenoblade has been announced for a European release - and its pretty much finished. It's been fully translated into English, complete with English voice-overs. All it REALLY need is a NTSC transfer and a new Region code and BAM!! a US release is made just like that. Seriously Nintendo - three or four hours of work, an afternoon at MOST, and you could please thousands of eager Wii owners.
As for the other two titles - Nintendo has stated unequivocally that they are to remain in Japan. So don't hold your breath for those.
I'm not much of an RPG fanatic, but you'd think that with a release schedual this sparse Nintendo would be bringing these games over asap. They look really good and it's a shame they might never leave Japan. Oh well, maybe we'll see them as downloadables on the Wii3.
I'm actually wondering if a niche publisher won't just pick up the english version of Xenoblade for US release.
And yeah Nintendo needed these games on Wii over here yesterday. I don't think I'd pick them up myself (unless reviews were really good) but outside of Zelda the Wii's endgame is a pretty sad story right now.
If Wii U doesn't get an F Zero I'm quitting Nintendo.
Nintendo supported the Wii about as well as any first party, I figure. The problem is that a machine probably needs more than just first party games to justify it.
Games came out though I wouldn't call the majority of Nintendo's first party titles good games.
Yeah but niche publishers have picked up first and second party games before.
Yeah... there were no "good" first party games released on the Wii.
There's a few on that list there Crim where I would have to agree with Fuzzay. And at what point do you consider some of these franchises stale? Do we need another new smash bros. and mario kart and paper mario game on every console that they release?
(Also, FYI, the "Read More" link in the OP is broken.)
Also, it seems like Nintendo France confirmed that 'The Last Story' will be released in Europe. Good news for me then.
But I'm glad you enjoyed them. Certainly not my cup of tea.
I'm with Crim in so far that I loved the first party titles on the Wii, the Mario Galaxy games and Prime 3 in particular, to the point where I would have bought a system just to play them.
But yeah I recognize that's a pattern Nintendo has been on for three consoles running, and most people aren't going to feel the same way. It's grown tiresome, but in the end I'm glad third parties focused their efforts on more powerful consoles since, as an owner of all three, all things being equal I'd rather play a game developed for one of the more powerful systems than one developed for Wii. There are very few exceptions to this (like Sin and Punishment 2, which felt very natural on Wii)